Recap of 2010

I just read my New Year Resolutions from last January, and I must confess that I didn’t do a very good job of keeping them. I was blessed with a pretty good year, however.

The annual family newsletter has never been one of my customs, and they usually are written toward the end of a year and not in the beginning of the next one. Even so, I think I might attempt to summarize my good and bad times for 2010.

In a column I wrote this time last year I promised myself that I would not open any attachments or hyperlinks in incoming emails. If I had followed through on that one, I probably would have read only about 10 percent of what I received. Nope, didn’t do it.

In the same column I promised not to forward emails, but to revise and rework any that I wanted to share and make them into originals with no attachments of hyperlinks. Nope, that one was broken early and often. In my defense, I did do a lot of cleaning up of those I got and wanted to forward.

In March I visited my doctor and found that I was way too heavy. He had been on a diet and lost about 30 pounds, so I determined to do likewise. That one I did accomplish, and I’ve kept the weight off, even over the last few weeks, where we all normally tend to gain a few pounds what with Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years dinners.

Another feat I wanted to accomplish last year was to travel a lot. Well, I managed to take seven trips, including flying again for the first time in eight years. I visited twenty-eight states.

My crowning achievement was to get back to eastern Oregon in order to drive over the Hells Canyon Scenic Highway. It was everything I had expected and more. It would have been nice to drive it as a loop road, but due to washouts halfway around, I had to backtrack and make it a U-trip instead. The drive was over 600 miles and took from dawn to after dark, but every mile was an adventure.

My camera was kept busy during all that travel, with over 700 pictures. One of my favorites was one I hadn’t intended. It was taken in the early morning at the Kolob Canyons of Zion National Park, and the sunlight was filtered through the tree I was using to shade the lens, creating a rainbow effect. I don’t believe this could have turned out any better. It shows a hanging valley across the canyon, so I titled it “Dream Valley.”


There were some setbacks during the year, but I survived them, though the coronary problem that resulted in my driving prohibition was the most traumatic and the jury is still out on how much that might affect my future travels. At least I still have my wife/chauffeur, who loves road-tripping as much as I do.

God willing, I’ll be around next year to write a new chapter. Between now and then, I hope to share a few more journals with all of you, and of course, to write and share these weekly columns.

Origins of New Year’s Day

Since New Year’s Day falls on a Saturday this year, I’m going to use the occasion to publish a brief history of the New Year celebration. It is, after all, one of the oldest holidays in mankind, and most people make a big deal out of it.

I received this history lesson from a friend and classmate from my high school days. He says he researched it pretty thoroughly, and he gave me permission to use his work. I will attribute it to Arthur Plant, so there is no question of whom is the true author. I have added a couple of my own footnotes, however, so I’ll take credit for them.

NEW YEAR'S DAY ORIGIN

The day celebrated as New Year's Day was not always January 1, not until the Romans set it. The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago.

The Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring). The beginning of spring is a logical time to start a new year. It is considered the season of rebirth, of planting new crops, and of blossoming. January 1, on the other hand, has no astronomical nor agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary. The Babylonian New Year celebration lasted for eleven days. Each day had its own particular mode of celebration, but it is safe to say that modern New Year's Eve festivities pale in comparison.

The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March, but various emperors continually tampered with their calendar so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun. In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. However tampering continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar. It again established January 1 as the new year. But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.

Footnote: I’ve always wondered how those ancient people kept track of dates. Did they have a calendar that showed 46 BC on it? And was 46 BC the longest year in history? Did Biblical people like Methuselah and Noah really live hundreds of OUR years? Their calendars were certainly different from ours, and they must have used a much shorter year. And yet Stonehenge and other ruins from antiquity seem to indicate observation of a solar year very similar to ours. It’s all very puzzling.

THE CHURCH'S VIEW OF NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATIONS

Although in the first centuries AD the Romans continued celebrating the new year, the early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism. But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began having its own religious observances concurrently with many of the pagan celebrations, and New Year's Day was no different. New Years is still observed as the Feast of Christ's Circumcision by some denominations. During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Years. January 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only about the past 400 years.

NEW YEAR'S TRADITIONS

Other traditions of the season include the making of New Year's resolutions. That tradition also dates back to the early Babylonians. While popular modern resolutions might include the promise to lose weight or quit smoking, the early Babylonian's most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.

The tradition of using a baby to signify the new year was begun in Greece around 600 BC. It was their tradition at that time to celebrate their god of wine - Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual rebirth of that god as the spirit of fertility.

Early Egyptians also used a baby as a symbol of rebirth. Although the early Christians denounced the practice as pagan, the popularity of the baby as a symbol of rebirth forced the Church to reevaluate its position. The Church finally allowed its members to celebrate the new year with a baby, which was to symbolize the birth of the baby Jesus. The use of an image of a baby with a New Years banner as a symbolic representation of the new year was brought to early America by the Germans. They had used the effigy since the fourteenth century.

Second Footnote: Here's a real puzzler for you, one that I've wondered about for most of my life. What happened to the 33 years between BC and AD?

The National Anthem Myth

I have once again received an email with a video link to “The Story Behind ‘The Star Spangled Banner’- Our National Anthem.” This makes possibly the sixth or seventh time I’ve gotten that message, and while it makes a nice, patriotic tale as told by the narrator, it is so flawed as to be worse in the telling than if it had not been produced at all.

We have enough problems with history being revised and embellished, that we don’t need another fairy tale telling of what was truly a great battle. Therefore, I am going to enumerate and disprove the untrue “facts” given in the above video.

For obvious reasons, I will not share the link to that terrible piece of trash, so I’ll have to trust that you have watched it at least once, or that you will soon have the opportunity to do so. My advice to future would-be-viewers is, “Don’t bother.”

I found several separate instances where the unnamed and unaccredited narrator made partly or totally false statements regarding the Battle of Fort McHenry. I’ve enclosed the true facts in parentheses. Here they are, fiction and fact:
1. The title of the song is The National Anthem. (No, the title is Star Spangled Banner, and it wasn’t made our National Anthem until 1931 anyway)
2. The battle was fought at Fort Henry. (The correct name is Fort McHenry)
3. The battle was fought between the British and the American Colonies, implying that is was a Revolutionary War battle. (This battle, part of the War of 1812, was fought 38 years after the “colonies” became The United States of America)
4. There were hundreds of prisoners on the British ship. (There was only one prisoner, Dr. William Beanes, a prominent surgeon captured at Washington, D. C. in a prior battle)
5. Lawyer Key was the “one man” sent to negotiate a prisoner exchange. (There were two lawyers, Francis Scott Key and John Stuart Skinner, and there was no “exchange”, only the release of Dr. Beanes, procured by written statements from British soldiers attesting to his medical treatment given impartially and freely)
6. There was an ultimatum given about lowering the flag as a sign of surrender. (The lowering of a flag is always understood as a sign of surrender, but there is no record of any ultimatum being given)
7. There were hundreds of British ships in the battle. (There were only 16 ships, and some were not even warships, but smaller ketches)
8. There were women and children in the fort. (There were no women or children, only a fighting force of 1,000 men under command of Major George Armistead)
9. The flag was never lowered. (Actually, the smaller storm flag, which flew during the entire bombardment was lowered after the battle and replaced with a 30 X 42 foot flag, which became the storied “Star Spangled Banner”)
10. Mr. Key reported to the prisoners throughout the night on the status of the flag. (That is patently false, since there was only one prisoner, Dr Beanes)
11. Volunteers held the flag up, died supporting it and those bodies eventually kept the flagpole upright. (Wonderful story, but there is no record of any such actions)
12. When the narrator recited the first verse of the Star Spangled Banner, he used the wrong word, “...for the land of the free.” (The correct phrase is, “Oh, say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?)

What the narrator missed out on entirely was the casualty count of the Battle of Fort McHenry. The Americans lost 4 killed and 24 wounded, while the British, in sea and ground action, lost 330 killed, wounded or captured. I guess that doesn’t make for as neat a story as the one he spun.

For reference, you can use your preferred search engine to point to The Battle of Baltimore, or The Battle of Fort McHenry, but I can point you to this link: http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/warof1812/p/ftmchenry.htm

Now, please stop forwarding that horrendous video. It is a lie, and we already have enough of those circulating on the Internet and email circuit.

Ordering "Regular" Coffee
December 25, 2010

I am departing from my usual custom and publishing two columns this week. The reason is that I skipped a week back in August while Judy and I were on the road. I owe you a column, and I just happen to have a topic ready.

I’m sure you’ve all seen those messages that contain a quiz on your vocabulary usage to determine from what part of the country you hail. I know I’ve seen it about a hundred times. At the end you get to see what part of the country each expression represents.

I’ve taken the quiz a couple of times, just to see if I’ve “adapted” to my present southern surroundings, but I keep coming out mostly a Yankee. I never picked up the term “sack” to replace “bag”, for instance, among other quaint expressions. Also, I pronounce “aunt” like the tiny insect, leaving the ‘U’ silent.

Well, the other day I was in my favorite McDonalds for some senior coffee, and the guy in front of me in line placed his order for coffee, “regular”. Of course the woman behind the counter looked puzzled and repeated the word “regular” with the inflection of a question. Then she politely asked if he wanted cream and sugar in his coffee. His response was, “Yes”.

Now, I understood perfectly what he was asking for, but then, I come from a far north heritage where the norm for ordering coffee with cream and sugar is “regular”. It was only after I left Buffalo for Omaha, Nebraska that I learned that the word was not at all understood in other regions of America.

What made the whole episode memorable is that the guy who was ordering his coffee “regular” looked to be a Hispanic. I wanted to ask him where he learned it, but my wife says I’m too forward and I talk too much—she’s right, you know—so I let it pass.

Some of you who are also from the Northeast will dispute my claim that people use that term to refer to coffee with everything in it. However, in my teens I worked at Decco Restaurants in Buffalo, and that was always the way people ordered it there, “regular”.

I challenge anyone to go into any restaurant in Western New York and order coffee “regular” and see what happens. Of course, if you don’t drink your coffee with both cream and sugar, you better not order it that way.

Grounded and Immobilized

I celebrated my 72nd birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I really got a big surprise on that day that had nothing to do with presents.

I had a singing engagement with the chorus that evening, so I dressed in full tuxedo with red vest and green tie—very Christmassy—and was preparing to drive to the venue.

Sitting in my car with the key in the ignition, my vision suddenly went blurry and I got very lightheaded. Within a few seconds, and with no warning whatsoever, I felt a jolt in my left shoulder that literally knocked me back into my seat. Just as suddenly, I was again clearheaded and really alert.

I knew exactly what had happened, but not the reason why it had occurred. My ICD defibrillator had given me what is termed “a therapy.” It is supposed to give me a warning before it activates in the form of a series of beeps. On this occasion it took action so fast that the warning was overridden.

Needless to say, I didn’t go to my engagement that evening, and I was on the phone to my cardiologist that following morning. We did a remote data dump—one of the wonders of modern technology—to determine that my heart was performing normally again, and scheduled an office appointment.

I won’t bore you with details, but the end result is that I am forbidden to drive for six months. For at least that length of time I will be dependent on others to transport me to whatever functions and errands I have to attend.

For a person who loves to travel this is like a prison sentence. There are several activities that I will just have to give up, such as my weekly Spanish class. Other people will have to take me to necessary appointments.

My choral activities present a particular problem, since my wife is not a fan. I cannot expect her to attend rehearsals or performances with me, nor can I call on her to drive me to board and committee meetings. I can foresee some real issues with that part of my life.

Try as I may, I’m having a difficult time keeping my spirits up, and I really appreciate the burden I’m placing on other people to chauffeur me around. Now my hope is that I will get a reprieve after the mandatory six months.

I know that my ICD has proven its worth with this one therapy, but I certainly hope it doesn’t have occasion to repeat the performance, because that will probably ground me permanently—still a better solution than the alternative “grounding”.

A Good Stimulus Package

Well, President Obama is in hot water with his party for caving to the Republicans on the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Now Congress is rewriting the bill to try to make it more appealing to both parties.

In the spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation, I’m going to propose a totally different tax package that could provide long-lasting relief from our current economic woes. It would be a two-step program, and I offer it to either party in Congress, though I already know which one would endorse it and which would not.

There is an unknown element in this package; the amount is indeterminate. The reason for this is that nothing we do is static. Any program that effects changes in behavior has that unknown element in it. Change in behavior is what any stimulus is intended to promote, so the cost is solely dependent on how much behavioral change takes place.

Okay, here’s the plan…

Step one: Put a 6-month moratorium on collection of personal income tax from everyone.

You might think that those at the upper end of the income scale should be exempted, but it is impossible to determine what constitutes “the upper end.” A person living in rural mid-America with an income of $100,000 could be considered rich, while a counterpart living in New York City or Los Angeles would justifiably laugh at the notion that they are wealthy.

That is only one of a host of reasons why means testing is silly. Besides, The wealthy people in our society are bigger spenders, and spending is what the stimulus is supposed to stimulate.

There is another reason why we cannot and must not exempt anyone from the tax moratorium. I want everyone to get used to not having any income tax withheld from his or her paycheck. It will make step two easier to enact.

Step two: Repeal the 16th Amendment, and institute the Fairtax.

What politicians in opposition to the Fairtax always fail to tell their constituents is that the 23% add-on to the price of everything you purchase replaces all of the current federal taxes that are levied in over one hundred ways including the dreaded income tax. In Fact, it also replaces the other income taxes that masquerade under the title, “payroll tax.”

Can you even imagine what your paycheck would be if the income tax and payroll tax were not withheld? It could add 30% more to your take home pay, and that in itself would more than compensate you for the 23% increase in prices. But that isn’t the end of it.

The base price of most items would fall. The taxes collected up the line before the product comes to market are also gone, so it will make it less expensive to produce and some of that difference will be passed on to the consumer. Those who have studied the effects of implementation of the Fairtax state that the reduction would be about 22%. If so, the prices should remain about what they are now, even with the 23% Fairtax added on.

Now, there is one more factor in the Fairtax that would come into play. You are currently given a reduction in your income tax liability for personal exemptions and deductions. The Fairtax has a built in “prebate” that compensates everyone for those same exemptions and deductions.

You would receive a check or a direct deposit each month based on the number of people you support. The more dependents, the higher the prebate., so the 23% tax you pay on everything—up to a reasonable minimum amount—would actually be refunded to you even before you pay it. I’ve seen estimates that the minimum monthly payment would be about $500 for a single person with no dependents.

Imagine that! Not only would you have a paycheck with no withholding, but you would also get at least $500 per month from the government. If you have some dependents, it would be considerably more than $500.

What could you possibly use all that extra cash for? Maybe to pay off some of those credit card bills? Or possibly to purchase some of those items you’ve put off buying for lack of funds? You might use it to pay down your mortgage, or to buy that replacement car or bigger house you’ve always wanted.

The fact is this stimulus would do more to help get our economy back on track than all of that prior stimulus money combined.

I know that I’m not the first to suggest a tax cut as a stimulus, but I’ll wager that there aren’t many who have combined it with the opportunity to institute a whole new system of taxation that makes 66,000 pages of the Internal Revenue code obsolete while leveling the playing field so that everyone pays their fair share of tax.

Divine Intervention?

A strange thing happened last weekend during the Pittsburgh Steelers/Buffalo Bills game,

The Bills managed to tie the game and send it into sudden-death overtime. Then, when it appeared that the hapless Bills would finally beat their jinx this season and win the game, a wide receiver named Steve Johnson caught and then dropped a perfectly thrown pass in the end zone.

The Steelers then went on offense and drove down the field, kicking a field goal to win the game.

After the game, Mr. Johnson sent a Twitter message, a tweet. Here is what it said: "I Praise you 24/7!!!!!! And this how you do me!!!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How???!!! I'll never forget this!! Ever!!! Thx tho..."

In case you live on a different planet than I do, or you are a modern day Rip Van Winkle, you’ll already know that the tweet was addressed to none other than GOD. I wasn’t even aware that God had a Twitter account, but apparently Steve Johnson believes he has a direct line to Him.

I didn’t get to watch the game on television, but I read that Steve also dropped 4 other passes in that game. This occurred in a season where he has been a fantasy player and probably the most renowned player on the Buffalo Bills squad. That he blames his dropped pass on God is, I guess, understandable if blasphemous.

Now, some would call me misguided, but I was born and raised in Western New York, and the Buffalo Bills have always been my favorite team. Heck, I even attended their first regular season home game against the Denver Broncos in old War Memorial Stadium, a.k.a. the Mud Bowl.

I moved away from Buffalo in 1976, so I’ve only followed the Buffalo Bills from afar since then. But in a lot of ways I have to agree with Steve Johnson that some of the fortunes of the Buffalo Bills have been guided by divine intervention.

Or maybe it’s the other way around; maybe old Lucifer is the culprit. How else can I explain a team that has accomplished the records the Bills have, and yet they’ve never won a Super Bowl?

The game-losing fumble last Sunday is definitely not the first time that misfortune has struck the Bills. There was the missed chip-shot field goal that cost them the win in Super bowl XXV. There was the sack and fumble by Jim Kelly in Super Bowl XXVII that led to the 52-17 Dallas rout. Then there was that 75-yard kickoff return in the playoff game with the Tennessee Titans that took away the Bills’ chance to go to Super bowl XXXIV.

Oh, I could probably list dozens of strange plays that have plagued the Bills over their entire 50-year history. However, it took a guy named Steve Johnson to actually blame God for the whole mess. I don’t think I’ll go that far, but I sure wish the team would someday prove themselves like they did in 1964-65 in the old AFL.

Moons and Planets

(Note: I originally published an expanded version of this column back in February of 2006. Therefore, even though we are not currently under a full moon it still has its own relevance. At least, I think it is interesting even at this time.)

We are currently under a full moon. It got me thinking about all the troubles we have when the moon is full. Oh, you don’t believe all that astrology stuff? Well, I can positively state that there is a very good reason for all the superstition surrounding the full moon.

In my many years in the airline industry, there were always strange happenings when the moon was full. My airline, American, even had a reference page in the computer titled simply “Moons” where all the dates of full moons were listed.

It was common knowledge among ground service people and pilots and flight attendants that when the moon was full, there were bound to be some odd things happening. Customers were more apt to complain, delays were more prominent, baggage was more likely to get misrouted or lost and communications were less reliable, mainly in the form of computer outages.

When I worked at the ticket counter—we actually had a staff of people at the counter in those days instead of those machines you encounter nowadays—we always knew that a full moon was imminent, even if it wasn’t visible due to cloud cover. The behavior of some of our passengers was weird during those times, especially those who were “white knuckle flyers.” Customers were more demanding and argumentative. Voices were raised in situations where people normally would be rational and patient. And there were always problems with reservations being dropped or cancelled for no apparent reason.

In that same AA informational page labeled “Moons” there is also reference to another event that seems to screw up communication and travel. The reference is to times when the planet Mercury is retrograde. Three times a year Mercury appears to be moving backwards for periods of about two weeks. When the planet appears to go forward again, it is said to be Mercury Direct. It has to do with the fact that the Mercurial year—its trip around the Sun—is 88 days long, while ours is 365 days. All of the planets exhibit the retrograde effect, but only Mercury does it that often.

Think of two trains on parallel tracks going in the same direction at different speeds. As the faster train passes the slower one, the slower train appears to be going backwards with respect to the faster one. Well, that is what the planetary retrograde effect is. When Mercury is retrograde it has an effect on activity here on the Earth. And when it occurs in conjunction with a full moon, you can just imagine the increased effects.

I didn’t give you this astronomy/astrology lesson for nothing. While I was doing my research for the column I came across a Web site that gave me a whole new outlook on what went wrong in the Presidential Election of 2000. We all know there are dozens of theories out there, but this one could be the grand prizewinner. The real problem with the 2000 election was that we had Mercury Retrograde and it was exactly at the end of its cycle (the worst time) on November 7, 2000. In other words, the election outcome was in the stars—or in this case, the planets.

Other Mercury Retrograde Examples:
· Titanic sinking, April 15, 1912 – communication confusion delays rescue, causing more deaths
· John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon election, November 8, 1960 – confusion about winner in close election
· John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s plane crash, July 16, 1999 – pilot inexperience causes confusion about plane’s instrument panels
· John McCain’s campaign event on October 8, 2008 – calling his supporters “My Fellow Prisoners”
· Barack Obama’s presidential oath on January 20, 2009 – Barack Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts misspeak the oath, causing them to re-do it the next day

There are likely many other instances where either a full moon or Mercury Retrograde came into play in historical event and outcomes. Isn’t it fascinating?